Resident says neighbors should know what’s buried in waste charges

Watchdog Minute: Poway trash fees

When customers get a power, cable or telephone bill, it generally features copious line items about fees and surcharges, so people know what they’re paying for.

No so the trash bill in Poway.

The bimonthly invoice offers one line item — trash service — with no information about what else might be packed in there for the 12,000 customers in the city.

For instance, the bill includes a 10 percent charge collected by trash hauler EDCO Waste & Recycling as a franchise fee to compensate the city for exclusive access to customers. It comes to $1.79 for most residential customers.

Also, a $1.20 fee per month is collected from residential customers to help pay for the city’s Household Hazardous Waste Collection Facility, open one day a week in the South Poway Business Park.

Yes
93% (149)

No
7% (12)

161 total votes.

Resident Jeff Carr said he wants to know details like that about what he’s paying for. He said he discovered the “hidden fees” while researching errors in the invoice sent to his homeowner association. He has collected 100 petition signatures urging the city to require EDCO to disclose the fees on the bills sent to customers.

“I like to know what I am paying for,” Carr said. “Once I know it, I can question it. I can find out what it’s being spent on… I’ve gotten so much (city) resistance, it’s become funny.”

Jeff Ritchie, EDCO’s vice president and general manager, said franchise fees and other costs don’t need to be itemized — any more than his company would break out its salaries or rent costs for customers to see.

“It is a cost of doing business and therefore not segregated on the bill,” he said.

Leah Browder, director of public works for Poway, said the bill’s format is “industry standard as far as we are aware,” and there are no plans to change it. She said the public is made aware of the fees in the service contract posted on the city website, and when a council vote is taken to consider fee increases.

“The council is aware of the petitions,” Browder said. “There has been no direction to the staff to make changes.”

Any costs involved in breaking out fees separately on the bill would likely be passed along to the consumer, causing a rate increase, she said.

“EDCO is a business and like any business, they would be seeking to cover their cost,” Browder said.

Ritchie said all but one of EDCO’s 11 clients in the county provide a lump sum bill just like Poway. San Marcos residents get one line item broken out, a recycling fee, as requested by the City Council in the 1990s.

EDCO took over Mashburn Waste & Recycling Services’ contract with Poway after buying the company in 1998. Mashburn won the city’s waste hauler contract through a competitive process in 1994. Since then, Poway has extended the five-year contract repeatedly without putting it out to bid.

Ritchie said Poway is the only contract out of the six he oversees which goes the extra step of forbidding the contractor from itemizing the franchise fee without written consent from the City Council. Neither Ritchie nor city staff knew why that prohibition was included in the old Mashburn contract.